While still in its infancy, the popularity of both virtual and augmented reality is rapidly increasing. The Virtual Reality (VR) industry started by providing devices for medical, flight simulation, automobile industry design, and military training purposes around 1970. The 1990s saw the first widespread commercial releases of consumer headsets—e.g., in 1991, Sega announced the Sega VR headset for arcade games and the Mega Drive console. By 2016 there were at least 230 companies developing VR-related products. Facebook currently has around 400 employees focused on VR development; Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, and Samsung all have dedicated VR and Augmented Reality (AR) groups.
The first commercial AR experiences were used largely in the entertainment and gaming businesses, but now other industries are also developing AR applications—e.g., knowledge sharing, educating, managing information, organizing distant meetings, telemedicine. Augmented reality is also transforming the world of education, where content may be accessed by scanning or viewing an image with a mobile device. Probably the most popular example of AR is the game “Pokémon Go”, which was released to the public in July of 2016.
Thus, a nascent industry is emerging in the form of VR and AR systems. However, prior art VR and AR systems are limited in that they require extensive simulated and actual environmental specifications typically limiting a given simulation to a single proprietary platform. In addition, prior art VR and AR systems are limited in their ability to allow multiple users to share a common simulated environment in a collaborative fashion or to allow another user to view and manipulate a simulated environment of a first user.
Multiple attempts have been made to alleviate the problem of VR and/or AR collaboration across multiple users, albeit only across a common platform—e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,717,294; 8,730,156; 9,310,883; (all “Weising et al.”); U.S. Pat. No. 9,766,703 (“Miller”); and U.S. Pat. No. 9,846,972 (“Montgomerie et. al”). While “Weising et. al” in its various embodiments teaches providing AR views through a plurality of devices, it assumes a homogeneous collection of AR viewing devices of the same type and is completely silent as to how multiple users can securely be empowered to virtually manipulate a common object. These same basic concepts are taught in different embodiments in “Miller” with more emphasis on pluralities of users manipulating common virtual objects, however like “Weising et. al”, “Miller” remains completely silent on how to provide a secure environment for multiple user manipulations. “Montgomerie et. al” also teaches providing AR views through a plurality of devices from different perspectives while allowing different users to “annotate” common objects, again with no regard to providing security across the plurality of users.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2016/0350973 (“Shapira et al.”) discloses the creation of a “Shared Tactile Immersive Virtual Environment Generator” (STIVE Generator) wherein multiple VR users share tactile interactions via virtual elements. Similar to previously disclosed prior art embodiments, “Shapira et. al” is completely silent on cross platform compatibility and security concerns for multiple users, additionally the STIVE Generator as envisioned by “Shapira et. al” requires close proximity to real world objects for all users. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0105052 (“DeFaria et al.”) discloses an entertainment system providing data to a common screen (e.g., cinema screen) and personal immersive reality devices. While “DeFaria et al.” does at least acknowledge the possibility of multiple platforms (e.g., AR and VR) processing and displaying the same entertainment, the distributed data is relatively simplistic with the users relegated to a passive viewing of the data with no ability to alter the content. Finally, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0243403 (“Daniels et al.”) teaches utilizing onsite and offsite devices for generating AR representations of a real-world location. Again, “Daniels et. al” is completely silent on cross platform compatibility and security concerns for multiple users.
Additionally, numerous attempts have been made regarding varying implementations of cross platform sharing of a common model. For example, U.S. Patent Application Nos. 2004/0038740 (“Muir”); 2013/0203489 (“Lyons”); and 2014/0128161 (“Latta et al.”) all are concerned with varying degrees of cross platform sharing of a common model. “Muir” discloses the concept of a gaming architecture divided into two primary portions (e.g., paragraph [0018]) where one portion is comprised of a “platform interface” with the other portion comprising a “game program”, which includes a plurality of functional modules that interact via the platform interface. However, “Muir” only addresses cross platform compatibility for two-dimensional gaming environments (e.g., “standalone Electronic Gaming Machines” or “EGMs”—a.k.a. slot machines, TV, handheld) and is completely silent on the vexing problems of providing cross platform compatibility across multiple dimensional devices (e.g., two-dimensional screens, “Augmented Reality” or “AR”, “Virtual Reality” or “VR”). “Lyons” teaches a method for reformatting original graphic content designed for presentation on a gaming machine (slot machine) on a mobile computing device; but, again fails to address providing cross platform compatibility across multiple dimensional devices. Finally, “Latta et al.” discloses a server system joining various computing platforms (including AR devices) to assorted multiplayer gaming sessions. However, “Latta et al.” is completely silent on security as well as the details of marrying different types of devices to a common database.
Thus, the prior art mostly fails to address the problem of secure cross platform compatibility in a collaborative environment. Specifically, the prior art completely fails to address the vexing problem of supporting VR, AR, game consoles, and two-dimensional (i.e., computer displays and personal tablets) device collaboration in a secure manner with a common simulated environment. When it is understood that multiple manufacturers (e.g., Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony, Samsung) only support their own proprietary formats, it becomes apparent that cross device and/or platform collaboration is limited at best with each manufacturer attempting to create their own “walled gardens” in a perceived “winner take all” intellectual property competition, where the one or two winning manufacturers dominate the future VR and AR industry. Embodiments of the present invention address these differences.